Excerpt
SUMMARY: A Chinese-financed shipping canal in the works to connect Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast to the Caribbean would dwarf Panama’s famous waterway. But while Nicaraguan officials say the project will create much-needed jobs, human rights advocates and environmental groups are protesting the construction. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on the controversy.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour): They came by the busload. They piled into cattle trucks. They came by horse and mule from miles around for a rally that likely tripled the population of the dusty little town of Los Chiles.
At stake was Nicaragua’s sovereignty, they chanted, sold to the Chinese. The object of their protest is a shipping canal to be built by a Chinese company. As described in this video dubbed from Chinese into Spanish for Nicaraguans, it would stretch 170 miles across the country to connect its Pacific coast to the Caribbean and thus the Atlantic.
It’s not a new idea. The Americans once considered it. This map from 1870 shows a proposed route for a shipping shortcut between the Earth’s hemispheres. In the end, the U.S. Congress opted to build in Panama.
Nicaragua’s waterway will dwarf the Panama Canal, three times as long and twice as deep. Cost estimates range from $50 billion to $100 billion.
BILL WILD, HKND Group: It is by far the largest earth-moving project ever attempted in the world.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The project’s chief engineer is Bill Wild, an Australian veteran of many big builds, but nothing approaching this one.
BILL WILD: There will be two large port facilities, one at either end of the project, hydroelectric schemes, and a number of other parts of the project. So, overall, it’s an incredibly exciting and large and challenging engineering project.
No comments:
Post a Comment